Salt and Rain

Becky Dennison Sakellariou

 

I washed the salt from my hair

this morning, the distant sea

     steaming through the shower stall,

 

regretting the briny, sticky mass    

that had carried the Mediterranean

     into this northern white country.

 

I could have twisted it up in a clip

and stayed in the sea.

     No one would have noticed.

 

I left the summer chairs out on the terrace

through our first autumn rain,

     comforted by the way the water

 

puddled on them, how their outlines faded,

gathered into gray.  I was not quite ready

     to wipe them down, fold and put them away.

 

Then the sky opened a hole, a white jig-saw

in the grand opus of clouds

     where the rasping, hooting geese

 

draw a steady arrow

between the orange trees,

     following the blue  

 

toward landings, starvation,

     that one far place.

 

 

Becky Dennison Sakellariou was born and raised in New England and has lived all of her adult life in Greece. She has been “making her way home” to New Hampshire where she now spends half of every year.  She has published poetry in Beloit Poetry Review, Common Ground Review, White Pelican Review, and Passager, among others. Her chapbook, The Importance of Bone, was published by Blue Light Press and her first full-length book, Earth Listening, was published by Hobblebush Books.  Becky is passionate about language, landscape, and her grandchildren.